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Messages - Caldfir

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1
DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress
« on: February 22, 2024, 08:36:59 pm »
Quote from: Pillbo on February 21, 2024, 01:50:28 pm
So what is the deal with buoyancy and why hasn't it been included yet? If it is a technical issue what are the major problems?  Is it going to wait for boats?

Generally, DF development follows feature-sets related to some kind of player interactivity. Since there haven't been any features relating to buoyancy, it hasn't been touched. Boats are definitely going to require it, so expect a (possibly excessively) detailed buoyancy simulation at that time. Doing things this way means that every system gets created purposefully, reducing the chances that something needs to be repeatedly replaced. This does have the unfortunate effect of the simulation being perpetually somewhat lopsided, with seemingly obvious features absent.

Looking at the development-outline, I am like 95% sure "boats" is going to be the thing that triggers some kind of huge fluid-rewrite. Oceans of beer and hot-air balloons and whatever other semi-related features would then be on the table.

2
DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress
« on: February 16, 2024, 12:23:21 am »
Quote from: Afroman726 on February 15, 2024, 08:01:35 pm
Hello!  Im very excited for the map rewrite and was wondering what sort of plans there are to expand the surface level in fort mode.  I understand when you embark you can change the grid size but currently you have to load all Z levels below the surface.  Has there been any thoughts to having 2 embark selections?  One for surface and one for the underground?  I can envision having a 25x25 surface fortress sprawling with hamlets, houses and temples while having a 3x3 underground area to mine out and explore.  Would love to hear your thoughts!  Thank you!!

Questions should be in limegreen for Toady to pick them up.

The "surface forts" thing comes up frequently when people ask about playing as humans. The most recent direct reply I can find regarding this is here:
Quote from: Toady One on December 01, 2023, 09:35:20 pm
Quote from: elanto
I know this may sound a little strange, but I would like to know if your idea of an adventure mode will also be focused on people who prefer a more peaceful game mode? By this I mean if, for example, we can focus our objectives on making a farm and living peacefully on it, until the goblins allow us, spending our days fishing to sell the fish in the nearest city. Or, for example, be a merchant seeking his fortune to settle in a big city and have a life of luxury there? Or maybe set up a tavern in a city and work so that others can get drunk?... Will there be a possibility in the future of something like that? Would the ultimate idea of the game be to create a truly living world where we can truly do anything we want?

And another question that may have already been asked before, will it ever be possible in the vanilla game to play with other races in fortress mode?

Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8512440#msg8512440
mikekchar: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8512478#msg8512478

Yeah, it's really just a matter of work.  Every idea you suggested requires not peace but a robust economy, for instance, which is something we've been vaguely aiming at but have failed to attain a few times.  Other ideas of peaceful play styles require a more robust social sim.  These are things we're interested in.  Combat has always been easier, but it's not the only stuff we work on.

I think the reply addressed the other races question - gonna give it a shot with myth magic stuff.  The game is geared a bit toward dwarfiness perhaps, and dwarfiness has given us certain leeway narratively, but we're not too too far from having aboveground/etc./etc. stuff working out.  You do have a lot less play space that way.  Spreading out to a much wider shallower play area, as you'd have in the NPC human villages, is a technical problem.

So this kind of thing - wider, shallower surface forts - is on the radar. The "technical challenge" is probably not just the fact that those extra z-levels merely *exist*. They squat uselessly in memory, but I think mostly that just makes fortress save/load slow, and is a bigger problem for adventure-mode where they have to be constantly re-generated. It seems likely that once surface-sites become a priority, Toady or Putnam can find the necessary optimizations.

I also know that the question of "site stacking" has come up a few times - like embarking in the caverns under a human town. Currently, the map treats all sites as being infinitely tall, and all kinds of broken wackiness results from any kind of overlap. Cubic sites that can sit atop one another is one of the main aims of the map-rewrite I think:
Quote from: Toady One on March 02, 2019, 10:33:49 pm
Quote from: therahedwig
With the map rewrite, were you also planning to make it easy for sites to dynamically resize? Like, for example, Dwarves digging down greedily, but also perhaps surface towns expanding.

I thought it might help a lot with situations where the player's fort map is slowing down because 250 cave horses are trying to path through the third cave, and I wasn't sure whether to expect that from the rewrite.

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7937076#msg7937076
therahedwig (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7937090#msg7937090

Yeah, as you say in your second post, it'll give us way more control over the "loaded pillar" so that the third cave just isn't loaded until you get down there, if that's what you mean about the cave horses.  And there should be lots of other ramifications about how sites grow, overlap and are shaped generally.  That's always been one of the oddest things about adv mode especially -- as you walk around, it has the underworld and all three cave layers loaded, which is just weird and wasteful (but necessary the way things are now.)

3
DF General Discussion / Re: most syndromes do nothing [BUG]
« on: February 01, 2024, 02:18:43 am »
Testing suggested by Putnam with PEAK:2 rather than ABRUPT.

Spoiler: fever interactions (click to show/hide)

Everybody starts off with "moderate fever" here. The 400x1000@2 tapered-off to "slight fever" first, followed shortly by the 600x1000@2 group. Everybody ends up "healthy" at around the same time (I couldn't tell any difference) which is kinda strange - would expect the PEAK values to end first.

The SEV*SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED seems to dictate the peak value, and ABRUPT/PEAK work as advertized (square vs triangle-wave).


4
DF General Discussion / Re: most syndromes do nothing [BUG]
« on: February 01, 2024, 01:55:05 am »
Some additional results. I was thinking about bite attacks, and realized I hadn't checked how SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED interacts with SPECIALATTACK_INJECT_EXTRACT.

Testing with bite-inject attacks with fevers. Modded dogs attacking standard humans (6 of each set to fight in pairs).
Spoiler: venomous fever-dogs (click to show/hide)

Comparing these to application via interaction (directly applied via arena interface to 6 humans).
Spoiler: fever syndrome interaction (click to show/hide)

Summary of results:
  • (bite) CE_FEVER:SEV:100 + SPECIALATTACK_INJECT_EXTRACT:...:100:100 => "slight fever" (SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:NA/1/10/100 all same)
  • (bite) CE_FEVER:SEV:100 + SPECIALATTACK_INJECT_EXTRACT:...:1000:1000 => "serious fever" (SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:NA/1/10/100 all same)
  • (interaction) CE_FEVER:SEV:100 => nothing
  • (interaction) CE_FEVER:SEV:100 + SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:10:0 => nothing
  • (interaction) CE_FEVER:SEV:100 + SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:100:0 => "slight fever"
  • (interaction) CE_FEVER:SEV:100 + SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:1000:0 => "slight fever"
  • (interaction) CE_FEVER:SEV:1000 + SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:1000:0 => "serious fever"

From this we can deduce:
  • SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED is *ignored* when using SPECIALATTACK_INJECT_EXTRACT.
  • SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED is a simple multiplier applied to SEV for interactions (and vermin-bites?).
  • SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:X:0 is ~10x weaker than SPECIALATTACK_INJECT_EXTRACT:...:X:X

I am very curious where that extra 10x multiplier is coming from on the inject attacks.

5
DF General Discussion / Re: most syndromes do nothing [BUG]
« on: January 28, 2024, 09:51:17 pm »
I mean you don't need to rely on int-shenanigans to get the concentration up - SEV is happy to accept very large values for most of the effects I tested. The main problem is that SEV:100 seems like it is intended to be the maximum, but in practise this isn't the case.

6
DF General Discussion / Re: most syndromes do nothing [BUG]
« on: January 26, 2024, 03:57:07 am »
Thanks Ulfarr.

One more piece of information - it does seem like syndromes applied by injection via creature attacks have an extra ~10x multiplier. The following syndrome was used:
Code: [Select]
    [SYNDROME]
      [IE_ARENA_NAME:fever 100A]
      [CE_FEVER:SEV:100:PROB:100:START:1:END:5000:ABRUPT]

  • Via interaction with [SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:1000:0], the target got "slight fever" (vermin bites same)
  • Via creature-attack with [SPECIALATTACK_INJECT_EXTRACT:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:IBLOOD_100:LIQUID:1000:1000], the target got "serious fever"

So you unfortunately the amount-injected isn't directly usable as a concentration :S

It kinda felt like I was going crazy because I couldn't find a bug report or anything. Now that I know this is a long-standing "to be looked into" thing I am less worried. Gonna wrap up the investigation here unless someone asks me to keep digging. Will summarize this data on the bug-report and update the relevant sections on the wiki.

7
DF General Discussion / Re: most syndromes do nothing [BUG]
« on: January 26, 2024, 12:09:31 am »
There is definitely still some kind of problem. I will try illustrate with a specific example:

It is not currently possible for an interaction (or vermin-bite) to cause a syndrome that results in "moderate fever" without setting CE_FEVER:SEV larger than 100. Current values for CE_*:SEV in the vanilla game are never larger than 100, indicating this is the "correct" range. SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED can be used to increase the adjusted-level, but the maximum allowed value of 1000 is not enough.

The following conditions can be applied easily in the arena to demonstrate:
Spoiler: interaction_debug_fever.txt (click to show/hide)

I've created syndromes specifically avoiding contributions of the dilution-factor, so the problem appears to be with the initial "syndrome concentration".

8
DF General Discussion / Re: most syndromes do nothing [BUG]
« on: January 25, 2024, 09:03:34 pm »
@Putnam Thanks for the quick response!

Quote from: Putnam on January 25, 2024, 06:18:26 pm
2. If the symptom is RESISTABLE, multiply the dilution factor by min(500, exposure count*10+100)/100 (apparently RESISTABLE refers to immunity from repeat exposure???? I didn't know this either????)
This explains why my testing made it seem like RESISTABLE does nothing. It makes sense from the perspective of syndromes originally just being poisonous bites, with creatures "building a tolerance" to the poison. With the modern expansion of their functionality, this is unexpected.

An initial expected "concentration factor" of 10k would explain the oddities in my testing. Since I was only testing interaction-based syndromes, and there is no "concentration" available from the interaction itself like with attacks.

The use of the SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED tag seems intended as a workaround:
Quote from: Toady One on February 01, 2020, 04:06:14 am
The SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED tag was a precaution after I had one bug with effects not fully manifesting due to low levels.  It may not be necessary, but I decided to give everybody a full dose of the juice until I could get a closer look at it.

The vanilla raws, however, use a value of 1000, not 10000. I tested it and this does still mean that CE_FEVER:SEV:100 + SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:1000:0 results in only "slight fever". With this pumped up to 10k, this produces the "serious fever" you'd expect. There seems to be a hidden hard-cap of 1000 on SYN_CONCENTRATION_ADDED:X so this cannot be cranked up to 10k to fix the issue. Values below 1000 seem to work alright, but you need SEV:500 to get a "moderate fever" with the maximum concentration-multiplier.

edit: (removed section - information was bad and rambling)

9
DF General Discussion / Re: most syndromes do nothing [BUG]
« on: January 24, 2024, 01:30:11 pm »
Did a search on the forums for anyone else who noticed this, and the only promising hit was this one from 2016:
Quote from: Thomasasia on October 20, 2016, 10:03:14 pm
After trying to make a human breathe dust with syndrome affects, in the raws of my region 1, i just could not get it to work. Aggravated, i decided to go into the object testing arena (using the default, unedited raws). Lo and behold! The bark scorpion's poison had no effect, and nor did the iron man's gas! I am very confused at this point,  is this a bug or something? i waited a while for the syndromes to show their effects, but i got nothing.

Will try to grab an old 0.4x version to see how far back this goes.

edit: confirmed in 0.47.05

edit: confirmed in 0.43.05 (2016)

edit: present in 0.34.11, but manifestation is slightly different
  - values below CE_FEVER:SEV:9900 result in "slight fever" rather than nothing at all

I could go back farther but it gets harder to test because interactions don't exist, so it would involve licking modded cave-blobs or whatever. The point is somewhat moot. This issue is ten years old.

This explains so much. Why do most forgotten beasts seem so weak? Whatever random syndrome their blood or breath is causing is very likely to be pulling from a pool of effects that are effectively locked to zero!

10
DF General Discussion / most syndromes do nothing [BUG]
« on: January 24, 2024, 01:25:52 pm »
bug report: https://dwarffortressbugtracker.com/view.php?id=12668

Summary: many syndrome effects are less powerful than intended by a factor of exactly 10,000
edit: after more investigation, this is probably only affecting vermin-bites in vanilla

Information regarding the severity thresholds of syndromes on the wiki was incomplete, and I was hoping to fill-in the data. Initially I was using modded cats to infect dwarves via head-bumps, but switched to arena-testing when I couldn't make that work. Eventually I just tried arbitrarily large numbers in the arena via custom interactions of the following form:

Code: [Select]
[INTERACTION:DEBUG_INFECTION011]
  [I_TARGET:A:CREATURE]
    [IT_LOCATION:CONTEXT_CREATURE]
  [I_EFFECT:ADD_SYNDROME]
    [IE_TARGET:A]
    [IE_IMMEDIATE]
    [SYNDROME]
      [IE_ARENA_NAME:fever 10kA]
      [CE_FEVER:SEV:10000:PROB:100:START:1:END:5000:ABRUPT]

It soon became evident that the required CE_FEVER:SEV (severity) values needed to be over 10k to have any effect at all. This was not uniform over the effect-types, and I set-out the find the cutoffs. I tested using groups of 10 allied humans for each test-syndrome (edit: confirmed fevers in fortress mode match arena findings). The following is a summary of my research, capturing the lower/upper bounds for each threshold boundary:
Quote
CE_NUMBNESS:
  - 7500A< "completely numb" ~9900A
  - ~500K consistently "injured"
  - never fatal? (tested to 1GA)
 
CE_FEVER:
  - 7500A< "slight fever" ~9900A
  - 100kA< "moderate fever" ~500kA (+"injured" sometimes)
  - ~500kA< "serious fever" ~1MA (+"seriously injured" sometimes)
  - never fatal? (tested to 1GA)
 
CE_DIZZINESS:
  - 7500A< "dizzy" ~9900A
  - ~500K consistently "injured"
  - never fatal? (tested to 1GA)
  - no fainting as described by wiki
 
CE_PAIN:
  - "slight pain" <~2500A???
  - ~50K ("seriously injured" consistently)
  - 100kA< "pain" ~500kA
  - ~500kA< "extreme pain" ~1MA ("unconscious" consistently)
 
CE_NAUSEA:
  - 7500A< "nauseous" ~9900A
  - ~500K consistently "injured"
  - never fatal? (tested to 1GA)
 
CE_UNCONSCIOUSNESS:
  - 7500A< "unconscious" ~9900A
  - never fatal? (tested to 10MA)
  - ~10MA no longer unconscious! (overflow?)
 
CE_SWELLING: (lungs)
  - "slightly swollen"desc ~250A
  - 250A< "swollen"desc ~500A
  - 750A< "quite swollen"desc ~1000A
  - 1000A< "very swollen"desc ~2500A
  - 2500A< "heavily swollen"desc ~5000A
  - 7500A< "completely swollen"desc ~9900A (+"injured" status)
  - causes rot at 9900
    - THIS rot does not trigger functionality-checks (can be triggered by bruising)
 
CE_IMPAIR_FUNCTION:
  - haults lung operation at 9900
  - no partial impairment below threshhold
  - always abrupt

CE_*:...:RESISTABLE:
  - does nothing?

The important note here is that 10k and 1M show up quite frequently in the data. If we divide these values by 10k, we end up with values that fall between 1-100. The outlier is swelling, which seems to have a factor of 100. The effects I tested were of the "constant-effect" variety (as opposed to "cumulative-effect" like CE_NECROSIS that scales with duration).

The vanilla RAWs use SEV levels between 1 and 100 exclusively. This means that most of the default syndromes are totally ineffective, and leads me to believe that the behaviour outlined above is a bug.
Spoiler: every vanilla instance of CE_*:SEV (click to show/hide)

The factors of 100 and 10,000 (100^2) being the specific factors here are significant. My guess would be that there is a percentage-conversion that got changed from a "/" to a "*" at some point.

11
DF Modding / Re: [MODDING] INTERACTION & SYNDROME QUESTIONS THREAD
« on: January 24, 2024, 02:05:08 am »
I've been doing a bunch of arena testing, and RESISTABLE doesn't seem to do anything. Does anyone know how exactly it is supposed to work? Maybe it only works on certain effects? Or maybe not in arena-mode?

(edit)

Alright, well I made a separate post on the topic, but according to my testing, most of the syndrome effects are bugged and don't trigger until a SEV of ~10000, with a maximum reached at ~1000000. It is weird that I couldn't find any mention of this issue in this topic. Is this a well-known issue?

12
DF Modding / Re: [MODDING] CREATURE & ENTITY QUESTIONS THREAD
« on: January 22, 2024, 11:01:16 pm »
After testing things, I think I figured out what happened. The default bronze colossus already defines "TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:ALL:BRONZE" so when I added it to my castes, I ended up with both bronze tissues AND the new material. I went about fixing it by converting the tissues rather than just removing the duplicate tag using a CV. I think my solution was actually converting the bronze in some unseen "default" caste and then getting picked-up with each caste definition. Makes much more sense now.

13
DF Modding / Re: [MODDING] CREATURE & ENTITY QUESTIONS THREAD
« on: January 21, 2024, 07:03:38 pm »
I'm trying to modify a creature so that different castes use different materials. According to the wiki, SET_TL_GROUP is caste-level, so I tried using SET_TL_GROUP/SET_LAYER_TISSUE in each caste specification. The result was that the materials were all offset by one caste. To get the materials to show up on the correct caste, I had to put the tissue-layer modification before each caste, as follows:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(I verified the tissues by making the creature butcherable+domestic and checking the butcher's products.)

Is this correct? It feels like what I have here is a bug and a workaround, but it is possible I just don't understand what I'm doing.

14
DF General Discussion / Re: Why is the tile for humans "U"?
« on: July 30, 2019, 01:52:00 am »
Because U are a human.

15
Utilities and 3rd Party Applications / Re: Modding Utility: RCFC v2.01.00
« on: April 09, 2017, 01:04:13 am »
woohoo - annual update 2.01.00

Added a "lazy" option in config which only loads data as needed (rather than all together upfront).  I don't think performance is a big deal unless you're chewing on something huge like Masterwork, but that's what I felt like programming today while spaced out on pain meds after surgery.  I also fixed up the assembly/deployment, so this will hopefully be less painful to update in the future (which was one of the big reasons this has been dead so long). 

I think the next thing I'll try to tackle will probably be a "logical-merge" function.  There's plenty of similar functionality floating around this forum, but the difference here would be that the merge would be happening to the interpreted objects, rather than on the text, so it would probably be more robust.  We'll see. 

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